Bloodbomb
by Fan Fan Girl
Summary: Discontinued. So AU that you'll want to explode! Kalas wants to punch something, Xelha wants to understand, and Lyude just wants to be loved. And then there's the BOMB.


_Bloodbomb_

_One_

Blood.

Breaking — building — bursting.

Tightropes suspended high in the big, blue sky. Stretching veins of sparkling red. Slice. Splat. Dripping down, a drizzle. So very red that it's black.

Black like the new hole in your head. Peek over the edge, and it's actually up, not down.

Down — _pow_, that's gonna hurt — down into the blasted mud. Explosion.

Red. Glitter. Falling.

Up.

No, down.

Tall, in the highest of cables. Back up in the eternal, floating sky. Balancing on the wire of red, fling your arms to keep your balance; desperate, you've been pushed, dig into the red, don't turn back, leap forward; _leap_, you animal, leap because this is it.

No — no more. You missed, stupid. No hope now. Break your stupid skull open and just die already.

Falling... falling, like that huge, battered rose drooping in the bright-sparkle-blue sky, with slithering red tendrils growing from it; the veins begin to explode.

Sky washed in red. Bathed in red. Conditioned red. Pop. Just like you.

Only this time, you're not alone. One hand warm with the blood of another. Pulled up and down, squeezed thin and stretched flat, now made of thread. Drawn into away-land, feeling the bumping and rocking of loose corpses. Some of them breathe air. Some sticky slime.

All of a halting sudden, there's a pair of kindly looking, mending eyes; brown — like chocolate, oh, mmm, dang, chocolate — caress, light touch, slight jolt — traces of night, but like bridges spanning leagues of emptiness between people — loneliness.

And... bloody banners rise again.

* * *

She looked at her watch again. The face glittered eerily and indicated one o'clock.

She edged closer to press herself against the wall and peered around the bend; a full, dust-white moon glowed on as the men murdered him.

"Ha ha ha," they said when they were done, sinking back into midnight and slapping bloodied bricks against their palms. Through the darkness their voices echoed, multiplying in the emptiness into fifty, a hundred, a thousand phantoms. Every voice was glad. The job was finally done.

Voices faded, and soon the night was still. They were all gone now. No threat, unless they decided they wanted a souvenir and came back. She breathed an unsteady breath and, turning the corner, crept to him. The man lay lifeless. For a time the coast was clear. She shivered; she shivered with cold, with fear. She knelt at his side, hesitating, almost afraid to touch his face, but stretched her hand out anyway. She braced herself and put a hand to his jaw and turned his head to her — she gasped.

Hideous. Half-closed, glazed eyes caught hers. They stared past her and trickled with drying tears of blood; the cold pallor of his face betrayed only shadows. There was no way on earth that this man could still be alive. Still, solemnly, she pressed two fingers to the side of his blood-stained neck.

_Bum. __Ba__-bum. __Ba__-bum. __Ba__—_

"N-no way..."

She allowed herself a whole entire minute to stare at the monster, and then she snapped out of it and, taking one of his limp and bloodied hands, climbed to her feet. "Let's get you out of here, big guy." She pulled his arm around her shoulder and staggered under the weight — then all at once the stench hit her; she coughed lowly turned her head away. He hung loosely on her, smelling like chopped red meat and decay and unwashed sweat. She gagged.

But it wouldn't be long until they got to the school. The medical laboratory was just across the street. Only a few steps really, and she could deal with that, just, she would have to stop breathing for a few minutes and keep down very low.

She trudged and stared around, vaguely wondering about the men from earlier, seeing no one in the streets but dreading the horrid laughter. Not too often was it that the gangs ventured into New Monolith, and even then they usually kept to the northern part of town. At least, according to the newspapers they did. She shrugged the man on her shoulders and grimaced. Didn't this guy read the newspapers?

She just assumed that he was another gang member, though. Normally people didn't earn beatings where she came from — normally people didn't bleed all over her, either. People kept away, and ignored her, and granted her peace. They didn't scream bloody murder with a voice like the devil and then get shot in the head. Lucky for _him_, she had happened to be awake with research, and was willing to take a break and investigate something new. No one else would have helped him.

So she crossed the street, next unloading him against the gate of the university and putting a hand on the sleek bars of the door. Looking down, she watched his eyes suddenly flutter as though he were caught in a dream, the stained eyelids resembling the red, see-through marbles that poor children play with. She shook her head, unlocked the gate, and, taking hold of him again, dragged him inside.

The trail left faint streaks of red on the white pavement of the walkway. Blood splatters glistened like glowing entrance signs, directing the way to the university, pointing up the creaking, spiral stairs, dragging down the hallways, at last retreating into a dark classroom. Lights flickered on, dimly illuminating the owner of the blood as he was heaved onto a desk.

He began to cough at the completion of his journey, arms flopping on the teacher's desk and dangling legs kicking futilely in the air. The young woman glanced fretfully at him, by that time already on the phone calling the police. "Hold on, mister," she said. He kept choking, the blood kept oozing. She paced to his side and stared.

Then she turned and hurried to the back of the classroom, where several bookshelves stood in musty neglect. She ran her finger across the broken spines — _Monolith Physician's Manual, __The__ Little Book of Hypothermia, __Your Surgeon and You_ — and there, thin and unassuming among them, _First Aid __at Home._ She flipped through the handbook, glancing nervously across the room at the blood leaking from the man's head. Aside from the few health books she had read as a girl years ago, she knew next to nothing about medical treatment.

Certainly, she would not be able to manage on her own now. Thank heavens the phone picked up.

"New Monolith Police Department—"

"...Yes? Hello? I'm calling from the NMU South Laboratory; I have seriously injured man here. He's been shot in the head..."

She wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and began dog-earing pages of the manual. Lacerations, head injuries, excessive blood loss... She skimmed through the rest of the book and, seeing nothing of use, closed it. She started to walk back to her patient, and the muffled voice on the other line pressed her further.

"Can I get a name, ma'am? Where is your location in the building?"

"My name is Xelha... And we're on the second floor, in the old medical classrooms."

"Your friend's current condition?"

She appraised him quietly. "...I think he'll last, but you'll have to be quick."

"Ah, yes, ma'am. Please hang in there. We'll send an ambulance right away."

"Thank you." Xelha turned the phone off and put it down, casting a worried eye around the room. A man lay bleeding — and doing so profusely — on the desk before her, and the ambulance would take a few minutes at least to arrive. She worried a little; the extent of her first aid skills lay in the application of a band-aid.

Desperately, she flipped open the book. Her finger fell upon a line, and she squinted. "_Keep heavy pressure upon the wound.__ Cover your hand__s__ using a paper towel or clean plastic bag and press hard. When you don't __have __clean materials at your disposal, __just __your hand__s__ will do_."

"My hands...?" She didn't have a bag or cloth. Her hands would have to do. Grimacing slightly, she placed the book carefully on his stomach and approached his head. Her fingers tensed, curling; she hesitantly brushed a few strands of hair from greater wet clump near the wound. She dipped her fingertips in the red liquid once, and then submerged her hands in it. Warmth gushed through her fingers; she pressed harder.

_And __this_, she thought, _was definit__ely not on my to-do list today._

Her stomach twisted and jerked most unpleasantly; the stench and soft goo were enough to make her gag, but she didn't retch. It took more than that to rouse her. Xelha had always believed that nothing could touch her. She was the Ice Queen. The cold, disenchanting princess of New Monolith, known for her reclusive nature and extensive inheritance.

In truth, she held no title and was not _really_ a princess, but her reputation served as more than enough to spawn such fantastical constructions. She never worked, and yet she didn't exactly play either. The young woman spent her days locked away in the libraries of the university, quietly insisting that she would write a paper of her own one day, that those years spent devouring hundreds of books would prove to have been essential in the end.

And in the meantime, her mother and teachers and friends looked upon her with a kind of curiosity. She was just so... _unlike_ anybody else.

Xelha almost smiled at the thought of what Mother and Gibari would say now — of her standing over a gang member, pressing her bare hands into the blood swelling from his wounds, reaching out to him as he dangled over the endless abyss by his mere fingertips. He would live, she thought. Then, as the ambulance's screaming sirens neared, her grimacing expression disappeared and turned into one of mild surprise.

That is, she didn't have to tell anybody about the man on the table in the middle of the night, and the rattle of the gate and strained voices below the classroom window. Could she keep this little episode between just her and the police department? Did Mother really have to know?

Mother would be shocked to see fragile, little Xelha with blood on her hands and streaked across her clothes. She could be spared the imagery.

Xelha then brushed a bit of hair from the strangers face. "He's here," she called. "We're in here!"

* * *

A/N: Hey, guys. I know what you're thinking.

_OMG XELHA IS SO __FREAKING OOC__ WHY IS KALAS IN THE MAFIA__ WHERE IS LYUDE WHAT THE HECK!!!_

Umm. In case you didn't catch it in the summary, this story is so AU it's not even funny. It doesn't even take place in the BK world that we know and love... instead, I've created an entirely new world of my own to mess with. Which means that _no_, there aren't any islands in the Sky, _no_, Malpercio does not exist, and _no_, Kalas and Lyude and Xelha and everybody do not know each other.

Well, that's not entirely true, since Xelha and Gibari and Lyude are friends, and Kalas and Savyna and Mizuti have met before... But that doesn't matter! Just read on and see, okay?

This story was inspired by the Japanese drama _Hana Yori Dango_ but does not attempt to follow its storyline. I was just wondering what would happen if Kalas had anger management problems. Thus, _Bloodbomb_.

Which reminds me! Although the characters may seem excruciatingly out of character in the first few chapters, I assure you that they will act more like themselves deeper into the story... You just have to wait a little. Things will begin to make sense soon. There aren't even that many plot twists, I promise!

So, this story is kind of an experiment for me and I would love any feedback and/or constructive criticism. Unlike BtS, I'm not writing this just for myself... I'm writing this for _you_. So lemme know what I'm doing wrong. Other than characterization, I suppose. That insanity was committed on purpose.


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